Quotes About Illusion

To expect the truth from a woman is a beautiful mistake, and such beauty is one's fancy.

Waiting and expecting a destination in the way of a mirage results in another optical illusion, as a bare reality, such a journey carries only the failure of time and life.

Waiting and expecting a destination in the way of a mirage; it results in another optical illusion, as a bare reality, such a journey carries only the failure of time and life.

Your eyes mirror you in the mirror, not the mirror, as the mirror mirrors nothing to a blind.

Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies...

Maybe every man has two such women—at least two. Marry a red rose and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is "moonlight in front of my bed." Marry a white rose, and before long she'll be a grain of sticky rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart.

Is loving someone enough? he wondered. Or is God like Stromboli, making us think we're in control of our fate while turning us all into jackasses?

this must be part of some pathetic fallacy, whereby if you fall in love with one man, all men instantly become desirable, whether they actually are or not.

Education is...A form of self-delusion.

But real life is not art.

May I point out something? You always use true and truthfully, when you speak and when you write. Or you say: unexpectedly. But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things ever happen unexpectedly? You know better than I that it's all a fraud and that one thing follows another and then another. I don't do anything truthfully anymore, Lenù. And I've learned to pay attention to things. Only idiots believe that they happen unexpectedly.

Even Tolstoy is an insignificant shadow if he takes a stroll with Anna Karenina.

The 'right reading' is an invention of academics and critics. Every reader gets from the book he is reading nothing else but his book. The shelves where we line up the volumes we've read are deceptive. We have available there only titles, covers, pages. But the books we've truly read are phantoms conjured up by reading with no rules.

the disgusting face of things alone was not enough for writing a novel: without imagination it would seem not a true face but a mask.

Buenos o malos, todos los hombres se creen que en cada una de sus empresas debes colocarlos en un altar cual san Jorge que mata al dragón.

Solo en las malas novelas la gente piensa siempre lo correcto, dice siempre lo correcto, todo efecto tiene su causa, hay simpáticos y antipáticos, buenos y malos, al final todo te consuela

No es el barrio el que está enfermo, no es Nápoles, sino el planeta, es el universo, o los universos. La habilidad consiste en ocultar u ocultarse el verdadero estado de las cosas.

Beautiful everywhere, outside and in, male fantasies.

el más engañado era yo, engañado por mí mismo...

Ci metti sopra le chiese, i conventi, i libri - sembrano così importanti, i libri, disse con sarcasmo, tu ci hai dedicato tutta la tua vita - e il male sfonda il pavimento e sbuca dove non te l'aspetti.

May I point out something? You always use true and truthfully, when you speak and when you write. Or you say: unexpectedly. But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things ever happen unexpectedly? You know better than I that it's all a fraud and that one thing follows another and then another. I don't do anything truthfully anymore, Lenu. And I've learned to pay attention to things. Only idiots believe that they happen unexpectedly.

Was it possible that I—short, too full-figured, wearing glasses, I diligent but not intelligent, I who pretended to be cultured, informed, when I wasn't—could have believed that he would like me even just for the length of a vacation?

Penso che la bellezza sia un inganno". "Come il giardino leopardiano?". Non sapevo niente di giardini leopardiani, ma risposi: "Sì. Come il mare in un giorno sereno. O come un tramonto. O come il cielo di notte. è cipria passata sopra l'orrore. Se la si toglie, restiamo soli col nostro spavento".

Penso che la bellezza sia un inganno. [...] Sì. Come il mare in un giorno sereno. O come il cielo di notte. È cipria passata sopra l'orrore. Se la si toglie, restiamo soli con il nostro spavento?